Red_Keys said:PantsMan said: I'm probably one of the few monsters out there that seriously disliked the Guardians of the Galaxy movie... What did you dislike about it?
Pssh. Baiting me right into the hornet's nest, aren't you...?
Oh boy... Strangely enough, I had no real big qualms with what most people had problems with, i.e the standard MacGuffin plot and the villain. Sure, there's nothing unique or special to them, but it's not like I found any of those traits to be particularly distracting or glaringly annoying.
What really got me were, first of all, the cardboard-cutout characters.
Oh, they're entertaining cardboard-cutouts, I'll give you that; a few lines here and there made me smile, and I remember loving the shit out of Rocket Racoon back when I first found out about the franchise thanks to Marvel vs Capcom 3. Still, that doesn't change the fact that they're cardboard cutouts whose primary purpose is to deliver jokes (more on those later...); Drax (seriously, I had to google the poor guy's name...) isn't the warrior whose family was killed by the villain (thinking back on it, this was one of the worst-handled backstories I've seen in quite a while....), he's the brawn-head who takes everything literally. Starlord is the inept-but-cool rogue-turned-leader/Han Solo wannabe/dude who makes all the 80s references. Rocket Racoon? The stoic gun-nut (albeit, he's probably the best of the bunch). Green-skinned battle-chick (screw it, I'm not gonna even bother googling her name)? Straight man (Straight woman? Whatever, her backstory was even worse than blue-skin's, second only to that shoehorned romance between her and Peter...) And all this Groot love... For heaven's sake, his entire existence revolves around a Lassie joke! That horse was already beaten to death way back in 1958!!
But that's not the worse part; I haven't lived under a rock, and these character flaws are pretty common in most superhero movies... No, what really irked me was the part that everyone inexplicably (to me, at least) loved; the comedy and the atmosphere.
I think this is the first Marvel movie that felt too, how to put it... Disney-ish. That's it! Too Disney-ish for my tastes! Worst yet, it was a far too forced "Disney-ish"; it felt like the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie, only clumsier. "Curse of the Black Pearl" had humour. Quite a lot of it, actually... What it also had going for it, though, was a build-up to those jokes, and breathers in between them, and actual drama and suspense and... Well, you see what my point is? A fun and enjoyable action/adventure movie such as, for instance, the first Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't made solely for the purpose of telling jokes. Guardians of the Galaxy turns the humour up a notch too much and ends up in the weird, uncomfortable grey zone that lies between "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Airplane!"
It's too self-aware and has too many jokes to properly allow the tension necessary for any adventure movie to build, but it's still not self-aware or funny enough to be the new "Airplane!" or a decent, high-budget spoof movie.
Then again, I'm probably too harsh on this series. Maybe it's just me that's getting too cynical and taking this movie too seriously. I mean, I'd probably judge the original, cheesy, light-hearted, cardboard cutout-filled Star Wars in the same way if I were to see it today for the first time, wouldn't I?
Actually, no.
Star Wars has more of a "soul" than Guardians. It takes more of its time to build a world that makes you want to be part of. Its actors have more charm than the ones in Guardians, and make their rather flat characters work despite this last fact. It actually manages to tell a complete story in one movie without having to rely on sequels or any other cheap hooks.
As ancient and rehashed as the plot and characters of "A New Hope" are, there really feels as if there is this sort of genuine, innocent charm to them. Guardians just seems as if it's trying too hard to fill in its older sister's shoes, and awkwardly flaunts and flops around in them as if they perfectly fit her...
*Wheeze* And that, my friends, is why I don't like Guardians of the Galaxy. tl;dr, much? |